The Three Steps Of A Muscle Building Workout Plan

By Russ Howe

If you walk into any gym and ask somebody how to build muscle the chances are you will hear a different answer for every person you ask. There is such confusion surrounding the muscle building process. As any trainer will know, there are three fundamental rules to building a more powerful physique.

Before you begin reaping the results your hard earned efforts in the gym deserve, you must first understand what each of these principles means.

* The old classic compound exercises remain the key movements for building lean mass.

* Understand the importance of rest days to growth.

* Your eating habits will be just as important to your goals being achieved.

If you are due to hit the gym tomorrow, we want you to do it with a new-found confidence in your ability. You're going to learn exactly how to get the results you want to achieve with these three basic rules. The first of which discusses how to focus your workouts around the exercises which will encourage your body to grow.

If you are unsure what a compound movement is just think about how many joints are involved in a movement. If it's more than one then it is a compound exercise. A good example of this is a barbell squat. Any exercise which only involves one joint is called an isolation exercise and while it is designed to specifically make that muscle stronger it will not give you the double benefits associated with compounds. A good example of an isolation movement is a wrist curl.

There are still benefits to be had from isolation movements, of course, it's just about learning when to perform them and how to structure your workout session according to your overall goal. If your goal is strength and size then you need to attack your big compound lifts while your body is still at full energy, then round out your session by adding a few isolated movements afterwards.

That alone will be enough to get even the most hard gainers on the right road to success. But once you start seeing positive results, going to the gym can become slightly addictive. That is particularly true for those who have been struggling to get results and all of a sudden find that they are finally getting somewhere. As people we naturally assume that more means better, but in terms of adding lean tissue it is not true.

Rest is incredibly important. Think of it as a day of growth. Your body isn't actually building when you are inside the gym, remember that. You may look pumped up in the mirror but that will fade. The real job of building begins when you are at home resting. If you want to get the most from a certain body part you cannot train it every single day.

Last but not least we want to talk about your eating habits. Have you ever heard people say that abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym? Well, it is true. If you are eating junk food you will be adding the wrong type of size to your frame.

You can work out how many calories per day you should eat by simply taking your current body weight in kilo's and multiplying it by twenty five. That's your basal metabolic rate and you should add a further 50% to that target to allow you to get a good building plan established.

In order to ensure those calories are coming from the best possible sources of food you should try to split it between 30% from protein sources, 50% from carbohydrate and the final 20% from fats.

Thousands of gym members tend to use over complicated theories on how to lose weight or how to build muscle when in truth it's actually very straightforward. That being said, of course, you cannot expect to get results without putting in the work.